The Rake

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The Rake is a creature from creepypasta that originated on 4chan. When it first appeared in EMH, viewers well-versed in creepypasta lore recognized The Rake due to its distinct appearance: human in form, but with canine movements, which fits the description from the original creepypasta. In EverymanHYBRID, its presence is usually accompanied by heavy breathing, whispering noises, and loud growls. The Rake is exceedingly strong, with sharp claws. Unlike Slenderman, it doesn't seem to affect electronic equipment. However, footage seems to blur when The Rake is caught on camera, or nearby. It was suggested in the video Consensus that this was not The Rake's presence, but rather, technical failure.

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At one point The Rake made a deal with Slenderman to stalk a previous iteration of Vincent. The Rake first is mentioned in "THE SUBURBS", Vinny seems on edge and weird while driving. He's talking about being paranoid. Explains that something about the size of a dog is keeping up with his car, he is driving 45 MPH. He explains the creature is fast enough to even get ahead of him and wait for him at certain spots in the road. Vinny can soon be heard saying fuck and letting out deep breaths, goes on to explain that it ran in front of his car. His description: No fur, grey, walked on all fours but did not seem like it should. Vinny continues to freak out and focus on getting home. Tape ends.

The Rake is later heard in "THE VISIT", it is heard whispering to Vinny and wakes him up. Vinny jumps and says he knew he saw the creature. He asks the creature if it's working with the other ‘thing’. From the sounds of it the thing nods (Vinnie tells it to stop fucking nodding and talk to him) and Vinny demands further answers. The only response he gets is that 'there is an agreement'. The creature is there to simply watch over Vinny and check on him. The creature explains to Vinny that it isn't going to hurt him, that it is old and has seen its share of fun and 'not so fun'. It then seems to cut Vinny by his reaction and what he says. It then explains to Vinny that 'he is not its to take’ and ‘that he is tainted'. The creatures voice is not human. Vinny grabs the recorder and explains that he was cut badly. He explains the creature went into his closet and disappeared.

The first appearance of The Rake on video was in video Cops Checked, No Body on the EverymanHYBRID YouTube channel. The creature could be seen between the 7:17 and 7:19 marks in the video.

As the series progressed, it became evident that The Rake was stalking Alex, as personal messages to Alex revealed that he claimed to have seen "a big white possum or something" in his house[1]. Also, in the video Does anyone elses dog do this?, Alex's dog Sparky wakes him up in the middle of the night, scratching at what appears to be the wall of his closet, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing akin to that heard in "Cops Checked, No Body" due to the appearance of The Rake. On Oct 28, Jeff posted to his twitter feed that some papers he had in his room had been shredded. A follow up video from Alex (Business Cards on a Plane) revealed that the shreds of paper had left a trail to his closet. Further, he revealed for the first time that there is a crawl space behind his closet and and access to it on the back wall. It appeared that that The Rake was either living in the closet or crawl space, or using it as an access point to the house.

On November 5 and 6, Alex uploaded two videos. The first, (VID000006.MP4) showed him silently dressing several severe wounds on his forearms. In the second (I'm Okay) he described an encounter with a "horribly disfigured thing" at the foot of his bed, after having been woken up by a foul odor. Through YouTube PMs Unfiction forum member Didz confirmed with Alex that the creature he had seen was the same creature visible in the video "Cops Checked, No Body."

Two weeks later, In the video "Alex", Evan announced that he received a USB disk containing video footage of Alex that seems to have been taken at the same time of VID000006.MP4. He noted that it was "like security camera footage" and that this was very odd because there are no security cameras in Jeff and Alex's house. He came over, discussed with Alex, and determined that Alex seen the same thing that Jeff and Vinny saw in "Cops Checked, No Body": The Rake. After admonishing Jeff for not having noticed his brother's plight, Evan cleared the stuff away from Alex's closet doors to take a look inside the closet and connected crawl space. After seeing nothing, Evan closed the doors and started to say that even though he saw nothing, they should probably block off the closet or crawl space. However, there was the sound of a voice and the doors began shaking. This was unmistakably the Rake; listening to its vocalization here makes it sound as if it is saying "I am in here, Evan!" in response to Evan's claim of seeing nothing there. Another possibility is that it said "I am, The Rake". The video cut to the three guys sealing Alex's room by chaining its doorknob to that of an adjacent room.

Later in November, at the end of A Day with Green Feathers video, Vince gets a panic call from Ryan. After he gets the call he says that Ryan got into a car accident and that he heard the noises. In the video Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT, Jeff confirms that Ryan died from the car accident, and remarks that "Ryan was [physically] messed up, he, he had all these cuts all over his body" and that "all the glass was on the inside of the car". The consensus is that Ryan was killed by the Rake for breaking a tournament rule. In the 11/26 Purstream Vince says the noises he heard where like a "whisper", which many take as confirmation that Ryan was killed by The Rake. If true, this could mean that The Rake acts as an enforcer for HABIT, or maybe HABIT is The Rake.

In the April video One step forward, two steps back, it becomes apparent that the Rake was residing in the shed in the back yard of Jeff and Alex's home. Alex spots it in the back yard and runs out after it. Evan stops Alex before he enters the shed and Evan ends up fighting The Rake himself, resulting in several large wounds on his arms that are similar to the wounds seen on Alex earlier. It appears that The Rake has killed Sparky.

In July, in the video May & June, HABIT sends a video clip of The Rake to the Hybrids, possibly as a form of intimidation. There is another clip of The Rake in -.-., in between the guys discussing how The Rake seems to attempt to kill Alex in earnest, but not go after them in the same manner even though it has had many chances to do so. They conclude that some entity (later revealed to be Slenderman) is preventing it from killing them becasue that entity has its own plans for them.

In January, in the video "Jim Thorpe", Jeff, Vince and Evan are driving to Jessie's home in Pennsylvania when Evan receives a frantic call from her. They arrive at her house to find her door open, and Evan goes in with a knife to engage an unseen attacker inside. A few minutes later, he appears to throw The Rake out of an upstairs window. After a moment of recovery, The Rake attacks Vince who was standing nearby, until Jeff scares it off with an airhorn. It was confirmed in the the next video (Jessie) that it had indeed killed Jessie. Jeff also confirms in that video that Slenderman prevented The Rake from further attacking the boys.

In February, Alex reveals to Vinny in Consensus that the Rake has again been visiting him while he is sleeping and telling him things: prophecies, descriptions of Jessie's death, and so on. This casts doubt on the completely "feral" nature of The Rake and suggests that he may be more intelligent than previously believed (which aligns with the original creepypasta). Alex suggests that The Rake had also told him something about the boys, but before he could reveal what it was, Vince turned off the camera.

In February, Evan went to the forest with multiple knives and swords to fight The Rake, as seen in Isolation. He later mentioned to Vinny in L'esprit de l'escalier that he cut The Rake's head off, and it still survived and disemboweled Evan. The Rake hasn't been heard from or appeared in a video ever since.

It has been noted that in the UStream associated with Sleep Lab Part 1 that something can be seen crawling around the doorway into the darkened room at the rear just after 19:30; a couple of limbs emerge briefly, but move slowly back into the darkness, their movement being mildly reminiscent of the Rake's in "Cops Checked, No Body". Vince dons his Viking hat and goes to investigate (apparently in response to uStream viewers mentioning it), but comes back after a minute saying that he couldn't find anything. It has been speculated that this may in fact be the first appearance of The Rake in the series. Note that unlike The Rake's appearance in "Cops Checked" where it was clearly white, the creature seen in the Ustream seems to be wearing purple pants (reminiscent of The Purple Tape.) Other viewers have speculated that rather than The Rake, this is an appearance of HABIT.

In addition, one of the songs playing in the EverymanHYBRID crew's car on the way to Lambertville is "The Rake's Song" by The Decemberists.

Wikia contributor IzarTalon discovered that in Alex's video Does anybody elses dog do this?, two distinct audio tracks can be heard whispering (the Left and Right audio channels) something like "help me brother" and "I can't breathe." In the video Cops Checked, No Body, the same audio can be heard during The Rake's brief appearance.

According to Evan in L'espirit de l'escalier, the Rake survived decapitation and its headless body continued to attack Evan, disemboweling him.

In Three's company, when Vince ask if the cameraman can talk, it answers by making a strange noise, similar to the noise the Rake makes in Jim Thorpe when it is about to attack Vince. If they do have some kind of connection, it still unknown.

Missing during the time that Evan was actively possessed, the Rake returned after Evan's break from HABIT's grasp. Which may indicate that HABIT possesses The Rake when not possessing a human host. Alternatively, they are the same type of creature.

The letter the crew discovers in Reunion. is almost certainly a direct response to a similar letter from the original creepypasta.[2] Given the crew's obvious love of internet culture, and some historic association between the Slenderman and the Rake in creepypasta lore, some believed, based on the evidence, that it would be a logical step for The Rake to appear. In the 11/26 Ustream, the guys mentioned that they only skimmed original creepypasta and had never heard of it before viewers sent it to them. They claimed to have trouble remembering any of the details from the original story.